DataScience Workbook / 07. Data Acquisition and Wrangling / 1. Remote Data Access / 1.3 Remote Data Preview without Downloading / 1.3.2 Viewing PDF Files using X11 SSH connection
Introduction
PDF files
Most HPC’s allows X11 forwarding. You can enable this when you are logging in to the remote host using the -X
option. For eg.,
ssh -X arnstrm@condodtn.its.iastate.edu
Once logged in, you can now open any GUI interface programs on the remote-host and it appears as a new window in your local machine. Although, there are plenty of program options to open a pdf
file, you can almost always find the firefox
browser in every machine. This should be sufficient to open a PDF
file. To get started, type:
firefox
A new window will open, then go to file
» open file
» select the pdf file you want to open .
If you don’t find the menu tab, pressing alt
+ f
should bring up the file
menu
PNG files
Again, you need X11 forwarding enabled to do this. If your machine has imagemagick
module installed, load it:
module load imagemagick
To open any picture files, you can just do:
display filename.png
If you don’t have this program installed, you can try the firefox
method. Although, to view png
files, you may have to install the addon before you open the file. Addons are easy to add, once the firefox is opened, press ctrl
+ shift
+ A
, that will open add-ons
page (you can also just type about:addons
to open this). Search for Perfect View add-on, and add it to your firefox
. Now you can open the file normally as you opened the pdf
files.
Further Reading
- 1.3.3 Viewing Graphic Files using ASCII art in the termianl
- 2. Data Manipulation
- 3. Data Wrangling: ready-made apps